I recently got a chance to chat with an old co-worker I hadn't talked with for over 30 years. After all the "kids and ex-wives" stories we eventually got down to some reminiscing. He reminded me of a job I really screwed up...of course I had all but purged it from my memory. I thought it might be something to share with you all.
It was the late seventies and early eighties and field procedures were changing with the introduction of EDMs, cogo and data collection. For those that experienced it, we will all remember it as if we went from the stone-age to a moon landing in about 4 years.
I was with an outfit that was big on residential development. We called them "baby farms" as they were generally smaller and what nowadays might be considered a "starter home". We also joked about our slogan being "Tomorrow's Slums Today". But needless to say the business was very competitive and hurried. I had at least a dozen 80 to 120 acre developments that were in varying stages of construction. We ran constantly.
As a rule we would usually topo the entire site and give it to the engineers. After a month or so we would get a street layout to stake for the dirt work. That would be followed by utilities, etc. and eventually paving. Lots of wood got driven in the ground. And we worked for "old school" engineers. Even though we were equipped with some really state-of-art equipment for back then, the bosses preferred us to run a nail line on the centerline of a proposed street by occupying said centerline with conventional instruments. Then the stakes could be pounded by rag tape measuring from centerline. Archaic, but effective. My youthful arrogance had always dreamed of a day that we could occupy a control point with our 3820 and stake streets with a radial stakeout...and I finally got my chance. I had explained it would save a lot of time and someone finally gave me the go ahead.
This one particular subdivision had a small proposed lake planned. We had set the axis for the dam with lots of offset reference pins. One side fell up the side of a steep hill and the entire area could be seen from there. It was a perfect spot for a "control point". The section line along the frontage had been stationed with a nail line. Control was everywhere and I had a clipboard full of calculated points.
So on this fateful day I found what I thought was a 50' offset to the dam axis. I sent a rodman with a reflector out to the section line for a backsight on the nail that marked the intersection of the "big entrance" to the development. It fit like a glove and away we went slamming wood in the ground for two days. I was in heaven.
Unknown to me at the time I had set up on a 25' offset to the dam instead of a 50'. And Murphy's Law took care of the rodman that found the nail marking the entrance drive...it just happened to be almost exactly half-way in between two 50' station nails. Between the two locations we were almost exactly 25' south of where we should have been. The one distance I checked was within hundredths of a calc distance. The wrong control point and the wrong backsight's location error cancelled each other out and the distance between them still appeared as though we were in the right place.
We worked for two days and I only realized we were in the wrong place when we got to the backside of the 80 acres and attempted to match our proposed street to an existing street....I still remember missing the street by 24.95'....
An epic fail for sure. To this day I can piss off a crew by taking more "check shots" than needed. Once a hired hand asked me "how many shots are we going to take?"
I told him as many as it took to make me feel good.
I once surveyed a tract for the father of a girl I graduated high school with. Actually it was two tracts but several miles separated the two tracts. Both totals had to be figured and divided on a pro-rata share of the rest of the family with some getting some here and others there until all worked up to 100%.
We do it and no worries. About 5 years later, I get to survey the tract next door. I remember using a fence corner and couldn't find the 3/8" steel rod called for but the diagonal of the tract fit within about a 1/2 foot to a sho-nuff corner. Well, when we get to survey the next tract, my crew found the rod behind me. It was 30' to the West for the length of an 800' line that I had taken of the other folks.
So I went, hat in hand, to my friends dad. I explained the issue, told him I was willing to do whatever was necessary to make it right. This particular family division was a quite nasty one with people getting really upset with folks over stuff. As it turned out, the only one would would get shorted, was the man who paid the bill and kept the division on tract. I fully expected to have to buy some land.
He looked at me, and I'll never forget what he said in my office. He said "Kris, you came to me and I can respect that. You found your mistake and owned it. If you'd hid from it or lied, I'd burn you to the ground." The old man meant it too.
So, about 8 hours in the field to "correct" the line to the proper location, about 4 hours of office time to fix the plat and field notes, and $20 for recording the correction deed. The title company that did the initial deed was still in business and he was an old man who regularly called on me to "check" the field notes he'd written. He didn't charge me a thing to re-do the deed.
Long story short, I may still make a mistake, but damnit, we are gonna check everything till I feel good about it too.
I surveyed a house a block away from the correct house. Had a request from a realtor who we regularly surveyed for. Drove down the street and stopped at the first house that had his sign in the front yard. Surveyed the whole thing and then realized my mistake when I tied the intersection and noticed the distance was wrong. The right house was a block away and also had the same sign in the front yard.
Found a 95 foot bust on a tract I originally surveyed in 2006. What was originally 100+ acres has slowly been whittled down to a remaining +/-30 acres by me and 2-3 other surveyors over the years. The city bought the floodzone/intermittent water course for future park expansion. It was surveyed by a local survey company in about 2002 and then I surveyed the remaining land north of the park in 2006. Lots have been cut off in 1, 5 and 10+ acre tracts including 2 or 3 hotel sites (property is near the interstate) including a subdivision plat for a hotel from a couple of years ago by that same local company. The monuments they set encroach on their 2002 monuments by 95' and the sketch of the remainder of the 100+ acres showed a remnant of +/-40 acres. At $6k per acre, the landowner was shocked to find his sale would be $60k less than anticipated. There has been a brush fire since my last survey work and it took me several days to find the original corners they set in 2002, but my persistence paid off and I found the proof on the ground although the plastic cap was now a melted mass. I was told to recheck my math when I first reported the error and also that the city's GIS system would notice a 95 foot overlap so I was probably wrong.
I once set my sack lunch on the roof of the Travelall before driving to the Forest Service job. All other blunders pale by comparison to not having lunch.
Andy Nold, post: 428429, member: 7 wrote: I surveyed a house a block away from the correct house. Had a request from a realtor who we regularly surveyed for. Drove down the street and stopped at the first house that had his sign in the front yard. Surveyed the whole thing and then realized my mistake when I tied the intersection and noticed the distance was wrong. The right house was a block away and also had the same sign in the front yard.
Found a 95 foot bust on a tract I originally surveyed in 2006. What was originally 100+ acres has slowly been whittled down to a remaining +/-30 acres by me and 2-3 other surveyors over the years. The city bought the floodzone/intermittent water course for future park expansion. It was surveyed by a local survey company in about 2002 and then I surveyed the remaining land north of the park in 2006. Lots have been cut off in 1, 5 and 10+ acre tracts including 2 or 3 hotel sites (property is near the interstate) including a subdivision plat for a hotel from a couple of years ago by that same local company. The monuments they set encroach on their 2002 monuments by 95' and the sketch of the remainder of the 100+ acres showed a remnant of +/-40 acres. At $6k per acre, the landowner was shocked to find his sale would be $60k less than anticipated. There has been a brush fire since my last survey work and it took me several days to find the original corners they set in 2002, but my persistence paid off and I found the proof on the ground although the plastic cap was now a melted mass. I was told to recheck my math when I first reported the error and also that the city's GIS system would notice a 95 foot overlap so I was probably wrong.
hahahaha. this reminds me of a screw-up not by myself or another surveyor, but on my block. friends were renting a duplex up the street at 1701 e. 38th street. husband comes home one day and there's a brand new roof on the place. he only thought it was a little weird, on account of his landlord (another neighbor of mine) being a notoriously cheap old hippy. bout three or four days later the guy who owns the roofing company comes pounding on the door with an invoice. buddy, being a tenant, says he'll pass it along to the landlord, but he's not paying it. roofer says "well somebody has to, i can't afford this!" he still didn't know what was going on until a day or two later when he rounds the corner one morning and there's the same roofing company laying new shingles on the house at 1701 e. 38 1/2 street.
yes, we have a number of 1/2 streets here in town, and even for somebody who's been here for almost 3 decades now, it's still likely that i'll run into mistakes of interchange when people reference certain streets.
anyways, i guess the roofer ended up eating that one. my cheap hippy neighbor gladly told him to pound sand, and enjoyed getting a free roof out of the deal.
Not my screw up, but ...
When I was working for aerial mapping in the early 80s we had the usual T2/HP3800 for traverse for photo control. Not all of the T2s were equal. A couple were in kind of rough shape. One day there's a new old T2 in the office. A real beauty. I thought it must've been in the shop or storage. No, it had just arrived by mail.
Some years back... One of the PCs was heading for truck with the T2 in hand. Someone stopped and asked for directions. He set the T2 down, helped the guy with directions, drive off, leaving the T2 near the curb. He realized his error, whipped it around, but it was gone. And he'd only passed a single car.
7-8 yrs later, the guy who found it died. When the house was being cleared out, the attorney said "what's this?". Wife said, "oh just something he found along the road".
The instrument had a company sticker, the attorney recognized it was expensive, and sent it back.
I got the new old T2.
A bit like Andy Nold's story. Surveyed the wrong house exactly one block from where I was supposed to be. Same lots, different block.........................but, the same owner. Realized the problem as I was drawing it up. Went back, did the correct house, went to the first site, drove the bars down about six inches and never said a word. Hoping someday someone will call needing the wrong house surveyed.
In the early 1970's we had a crew chief who had survived two tours in Viet Nam. He was a little off sometimes, usually due to left handed cigarettes. We were sent out to survey a particular lot but the lot two doors down had a VERY attractive young lady who was skimpily clad lying beside her pool. We started surveying her lot when she saw what we were doing and came to ask questions. John T. sent us on to the correct lot and spent the rest of the afternoon with her. It wasn't an epic failure because we did survey the correct lot. But it wasn't John T's fault.
Andy
was in South Dakota or Wyoming in early 80's doing some oil exploration surveys. The landman (guy who got leases and permission to travel over the land) gave us our maps and copies of permits. He did not give us the geophysicist maps we generally got but kept those to himself even when we requested a copy. Long story short, we surveyed in the lines the landman permitted, the seismic crew followed our lines and 'shot' and recorded the data sending daily data to the geophysicist. Two weeks later when we were putting the final packet together and the geophysicist called wanting to know why the surveys and data did not check with his maps. The landman pulled out the geophysicist' map and we immediately found out why. He had permitted the correct sections but the wrong township and range-two weeks of wasted work. Some of you geophysical surveyors may have heard of this.
I guess my favorite one is the oil company gave us the info on where they wanted the well, so many feet from each section line, out of the northeast corner of the section xyz. I am out there staking the well, and landowner drives up, wanting to know who I am, what I am doing, and why he shouldn't shoot me right then. I get the dumb look, and tryt o explain that abc oil company hired us to stake his new oil well. He says ain't anyone told him about an oil well. Go back to office, call the oil company, explain the situation, meet them, they had a smudge on their copy of the survey map and mis-read section 88 as section 86! I have several others, but they just dont seem as funny.
In 1984, the best client of the company I worked for came in with a request for a rush ALTA. It was Tuesday and he needed it by Friday. He gave us the address and we dropped everything (at the direction of the company owner). Get to the site and it's a food processing facility with everything you can imagine. Very complex. We shifted the drafting team (pre-CAD) to afternoon/nights and put 2 crews on the data collection, then would bring the notes in and the drafting team worked through the night. We got it done on Thursday and called the client to come pick it up. When he looked at the map, he asked "what is this, the lot is vacant?" Turned out he gave us the wrong address - same industrial park, same street, just a couple of lots over. We ran back out and knocked that one out by Friday, as needed. As I recall, he did admit his mistake, but not sure how the payments were worked out as I was just a rodman. We were all pretty proud of delivering such a complex survey so quickly. Oh well, it was a good drill.
Can't do it Unc, court ordered gag order. :p
As an instrument man running the level, I graded a half-dozen or so catch basins with the wrong BM info. Many hundreds of feet of pipe and the structures had to be dug up and reset.
Learned a very hard lesson that day about checking into a separate BM. (yes, I should have already known this)
Learned two more important lessons that day:
1. What "favorite son" status was.
i.e. the crew chief with twice the experience I had and who was running the rod and told me the wrong BM number (the correct number was spray painted on the pole in front of his eyes) escaped completely unscathed.
2. It doesn't pay to take charge of your error and speak directly to the big boss and explain how things happened and apologize, it just gave him a name to remember when the next layoff period came around and non "favorite son" people went looking for work.
ooo...oooo-oooo! I forgot one!...
And although it wasn't really any "failure" on my part directly; this one will probably get me drawn into some high caliber litigation...but hey, I have been a little bored lately.
1990-1991. The firm I was with was selected by the fair City of Norman to perform updates on the FEMA FIRM data for a number of major creeks that drain the City's main populated areas.
First off we tried to reconcile all available elevation "RMs" that showed up on the existing panels. It was frustrating. They were either destroyed or it was questionable if they ever really existed. We found two probable that were intact but their elevations did not corroborate each other. One was a 1934 USGS disc marking a land corner adjacent to the Court House & Train Depot. It was also published with an elevation that seemed to jive with a good deal of the existing hydraulic data. But rather than just jump and run with one BM we decided to restore the BM run along the (then) AT&SF tracks, also set in 1934.
I spent a week running differential levels up and down the tracks and meeting every member of the Santa Fe's security staff. We recovered a good number of BMs and they all jived with one another in a predictable manner. As would be imagined all of the remaining BMs were on the fringe of the City's extents. As one drew closer to development the BMs disappeared. So this one remaining BM by the Depot was really the only one in town....and it didn't fit (it had been a reset) the datum of the dozen or so others that we had recovered....by almost exactly one foot. Being almost exactly one foot I was required by others to re-run my loops to look for an error. There were none. After a month or so of hard surveying we were faced with the fact that the FIRM panel data in town and the published USGS BMs differed in their datum by 1 foot.
A few meetings with the City officials and it was decided (since we were updating the FEMA data) to maintain the elevations that more closely mirrored the existing maps, even though it differed from other recovered elevation data. I measured bridges and structures and crawled through every nasty creek run in Norman for the next three months. The panels were updated and eventually approved. I left and went to work for the Highway Department.
Fast forward 25 years. The City was once again attempting to update their FEMA maps. This time in conjunction with some high caliber firm from Virginia. The city was paying for its entire limits to be flown and digitized and published with 1' contour data. I was mildly aware of it just because I watch the Council meetings on the local access channel.
Guess what? After much ado and lots of NAVD88 info for the GIS department it was determined the "old" maps had been prepared in error by 1'. It was decided to make everything "right" this time. All the maps were redrawn and a whole lot of LOMAs were rendered useless. People that had built "above" the BFE using the old data were now faced with property that was "below" the BFE. What a nightmare!
The new maps were published and the Council Chambers were full of folks wanting City officials' heads on pikes. It cost a lot of people a lot of money. It was sad.
The other day I ran into probably the only other person that remembered the old fiasco. He retired from the city a few years ago and I ran into him at the hardware store. We talked about what had happened back then and we made a pact to never talk about it again.....;)
James Vianna, post: 428544, member: 120 wrote: As an instrument man running the level, I graded a half-dozen or so catch basins with the wrong BM info. Many hundreds of feet of pipe and the structures had to be dug up and reset.
Learned a very hard lesson that day about checking into a separate BM. (yes, I should have already known this)Learned two more important lessons that day:
1. What "favorite son" status was.
i.e. the crew chief with twice the experience I had and who was running the rod and told me the wrong BM number (the correct number was spray painted on the pole in front of his eyes) escaped completely unscathed.2. It doesn't pay to take charge of your error and speak directly to the big boss and explain how things happened and apologize, it just gave him a name to remember when the next layoff period came around and non "favorite son" people went looking for work.
Blood is always thicker than water. I found that out years ago.
Andy Nold, post: 428429, member: 7 wrote: I surveyed a house a block away from the correct house. Had a request from a realtor who we regularly surveyed for. Drove down the street and stopped at the first house that had his sign in the front yard. Surveyed the whole thing and then realized my mistake when I tied the intersection and noticed the distance was wrong. The right house was a block away and also had the same sign in the front yard.
Found a 95 foot bust on a tract I originally surveyed in 2006. What was originally 100+ acres has slowly been whittled down to a remaining +/-30 acres by me and 2-3 other surveyors over the years. The city bought the floodzone/intermittent water course for future park expansion. It was surveyed by a local survey company in about 2002 and then I surveyed the remaining land north of the park in 2006. Lots have been cut off in 1, 5 and 10+ acre tracts including 2 or 3 hotel sites (property is near the interstate) including a subdivision plat for a hotel from a couple of years ago by that same local company. The monuments they set encroach on their 2002 monuments by 95' and the sketch of the remainder of the 100+ acres showed a remnant of +/-40 acres. At $6k per acre, the landowner was shocked to find his sale would be $60k less than anticipated. There has been a brush fire since my last survey work and it took me several days to find the original corners they set in 2002, but my persistence paid off and I found the proof on the ground although the plastic cap was now a melted mass. I was told to recheck my math when I first reported the error and also that the city's GIS system would notice a 95 foot overlap so I was probably wrong.
I did something similar, surveyed the wrong lot on the opposite side of the block, at least the two back corners were there and fit. Didn't have a clue till we got back to the office, what was weird, there were people home and they never came out to ask what we were doing?!
paden cash, post: 428549, member: 20 wrote: The City was once again attempting to update their FEMA maps. This time in conjunction with some high caliber firm from Virginia
Rubus aboriginum?
Late 1964 in Fort Lauderdale, Southeast corner of SR84 and I-95, both under construction, and I was the newly minted party chief. By then I understood construction staking but knew nothing about land surveying or boundary monuments. We had to stake the fence along the ramp, but the construction plans didn't exactly say where it was to go, so I scaled off the plans. That wasn't quite the proper procedure. I don't think I even knew there were right-of-way plans, which is what I was supposed to be using. Hey, I was young, and green.
Earlier that year someone had come by looking for a job and asked for the supervisor. The crew pointed to me and I heard the guy say, "That young kid is the boss?"
paden cash, post: 428549, member: 20 wrote: Guess what? After much ado and lots of NAVD88 info for the GIS department it was determined the "old" maps had been prepared in error by 1'.
They actually admitted an error? (a miracle) 😉
